Archive

One of the most hotly debated topics within the player base is the cost of runes, especially the ones used from level 20 onward, Tier 3. After recent conversations in the community led to a response from Riot Games Design Director Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street, Riot has revealed their plans for a permanent price reduction on some of the starting Tier 3 runes beginning on September 29th.

By Riot Bubobubo

A short while ago, there was discussion around making â€œrune bundlesâ€ to help out players who were just getting started on their tier 3 rune pages. After some thought, however, we came to the conclusion that we could do something easierâ€¦

On 29.09.2015, weâ€™ll be putting the following tier 3 runes on sale permanentlyÂ for 50% off:

Greater Mark of Attack Damage: 205 IPâ‡’102 IP

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration: 410 IPâ‡’205 IP

Greater Seal of Armor: 205 IPâ‡’102 IP

Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: 205 IPâ‡’102 IP

Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage: 1025 IPâ‡’512 IP

Greater Quintessence of Ability Power: 1025 IPâ‡’512 IP

Once again, we plan to run this sale permanently, beginning 29.09.2015 at 20:00 BST. Good luck out there!

Upcoming rune balance changes

Back in the 2014 preseason we spoke about rune balance changes but couldn’t deliver them in time for the launch of the season. The short version: we took a closer look at the rune system after our original announcement and decided that our plans weren’t going to get runes where we want them to be. We’re still committed to exploring the best way to make runes an interesting and dynamic system for all players, but in the meantime we’ll be implementing some basic changes in the next patch.

For starters, we’re very aware that rune costs are a pain point for many players, so with the upcoming rune balance changes, we’ll be kicking off a 30% offRune and IP Boost sale that will last from the start of the next patch through the end of April.

As for the balance, we’ll be making the following basic changes to runes (we’re only showing the Tier 3 changes, but you can assume roughly equivalent changes for the lower tiers). Supplementary changes in other systems will accompany our only two rune nerfs to armor seals and life steal quintessences. All other rune changes are buffs. It should also be noted that we will not be offering refunds (or meeting the price difference) for runes previously purchased or purchased between this announcement and the official sale start.

Attack Speed

Life Steal

Per quintessence2% life steal â‡’ 1.5% life steal

Per 3 quintessences6% life steal â‡’ 4.5% life steal

Supplementary:Â The offensive mastery, Feast, will now restore 3 health on minion kill (up from 2)

We’ll be keeping an eye on runes and may need to make additional tweaks for game health reasons, but we’re not currently planning any further significant changes in the 2014 season. We hope you enjoy the upcoming rune sale and take this opportunity to get geared up for the season!

Bonus damage for charging decreasedÂ from 20/30/40/50/60Â to 14/20/25/30/35

Zephyr (W)

Movement speed % passive now has a 0.04 AP Ratio

AP ratio reducedÂ from 0.6 to 0.5

Movement speed % slow now has a 0.12 AP ratio

Eye of the Storm (E)

Now grants additional AD to allies its cast on (0.33 AP)

Summary:Â Jannaâ€™s global passive has been converted to a localized area (equivalent to sight range). Howling Galeâ€™s AP ratio has been significantly lowered but gains a scaling AP ratio per second it is charged. Zephyrâ€™s self-haste and slow amount on the active cast now scale with AP although the base slow has been lowered. Eye of the Stormâ€™s bonus AD given to allies now scales with AP. Monsoon remains unchanged.

Context:Â Weâ€™ve been saying for a while that we wanted to change all global passives that provide a lot of â€œhiddenâ€ power, like Twisted Fateâ€™s old passive, and were finally able to tackle Jannaâ€™s Tailwind passive with her new utility scaling. The Howling Gale change looks like a significant nerf to Jannaâ€™s AP ratio, but the additional AP scaling per second means that Janna will need to fully charge her Howling Gale in order to do high damage at end game with her additional Ability Power.

Â

Â Â Â Â Leona

Eclipse ( W )

Armor and magic resist bonus reduced from 30/40/50/60/70Â to 25/35/45/55/65

Diminishing effect % on bounces can now be decreased with AP (from 15% to 0% at 200 AP). More than 200 AP makes bounces have a greater effect

Tidecaller’s Blessing ( E )

Slow % now has a 0.05 AP ratio

Tidal Wave ( R )

AP ratio reduced Â from 0.7Â to 0.6

Summary:Â Namiâ€™s passive now scales in higher movement speed with the more Ability Power she gets. Ebb and Flowâ€™s heal / damage bounces now scale with Ability Power, meaning with enough Ability Power, Nami can heal / deal more damage per additional bounce rather than having it fall off. The slow on Tidecallerâ€™s Blessing now scales with Ability Power.

Summary:Â Sorakaâ€™s health and mana restoring abilities are more effective the more the targeted unit is missing health / mana. Astral Blessingâ€™s armor granted now scales with ability power. Starcallâ€™s magic resistance reduction scales with AP and each time Soraka hits at least one enemy champion with Starcall she reduces the cooldown of Astral Blessing by a base percentage. Infuse now partially donates a portion of Sorakaâ€™s maximum mana to the targeted ally and its damage also scales with her maximum mana (in addition to an ability power ratio). Wish now affects untargetable allies and with Sorakaâ€™s new passive is more effective on targets below 40% health but less effective on targets above 40% health.

Context:Â We wanted to provide a link between Soraka’s primary offensive ability and her core niche identity as a defensive support. Additionally, we took this opportunity to introduce more gameplay into Sorakaâ€™s kit so that she will be rewarded more heavily for successful plays.

Â Â Â Taric

Gemcraft ( Passive )

Reworked: After casting a spell, Taric’s next basic attack deals bonus magic damage based on his 40% of his Armor and reduces his cooldowns.

Imbue ( Q )

Cooldown lowered from 20/19/18/17/16Â to 18/17/16/15/14

Heal AP ratio reducedÂ from 0.6 to 0.3

Now additionally heals for 5% of Taric’s bonus health

Mana cost reducedÂ from 80/95/110/125/140Â to 60/80/100/120/140

Basic attacks no longer reduce the cooldown of the ability

Shatter ( W )

Damage lowered from 50/90/130/170/210Â to 40/80/120/160/200

AP Ratio removed

Armor Ratio increased from 0.2 to 0.5

Dazzle ( E )

AP ratio reduced from 0.4. – 0.8Â to 0.2 – 0.4

Cooldown increased from 14/13/12/11/10Â to 18/17/16/15/14

Radiance ( R )

Cooldown increasedÂ from 60 at all ranks to 75

Damage AP ratio loweredÂ from 0.7 to 0.5

Summary:Â Taricâ€™s passive now gives him a buff that deals 40% of his armor as bonus magic damage after casting a spell â€“ each empowered auto attack landed also reduces all of Taricâ€™s cooldowns by 2 seconds. Imbue now scales with 5% of Taricâ€™s bonus health, although the AP ratio has been lowered. Shatter now solely scales with Taricâ€™s armor and not Ability Power. Dazzle has had its AP ratio reduced. Radiance has had its AP ratio lowered and cooldown increased.

Context:Â Our core goals with Taric were to make his passive a more interesting and involving ability while also opening up more build opportunities. Instead of giving Taric high AP ratios for huge burst, we want to push him to build more tanky with his new gold income to further cement his role as a tanky front-line support with strong burst / aura capabilities.*

Trinkets

Summary: With this preseason we want to diffuse the responsibility of vision from being a single player burden to a team-wide job. Additionally, we want to infuse more gameplay into the vision game with additional functionality and the addition of trinkets.

Wards

Support players were expected to shoulder the majority of the warding burden on the map. Because they could place as many ward as they could afford, this meant all of the support income was best spent on warding. We want all players on the team to participate in warding and providing vision to their team.

Oracle’s Elixir

Removed

Weâ€™re removing Oracle’s Elixir as it has traditionally been a major drain on support and jungler item builds, and has also traditionally been far too binary in controlling early game vision.

Â Sight Wards

Renamed to Stealth Wards

Limited to 3 per player

Vision Wards

Cost reduced from 100 to 75

Limited to 1 on map

Now have 5 health up from 3

No longer have a duration

No longer invisible

Vision Wards being superior in every respect to Sight Wards has created some weird escalation cases where there is simply an unending cycle of ‘Pink’ Ward destruction. By positioning Vision Wards as having different strengths and trade-offs – we hope to create a better defined role for both Sight and Vision Wards.

Other items

Aegis of the Legion

Cost increased from 1900 to 1950 gold

Avarice Blade

Now reads “Limited to 1 Gold Income Item”

Banner of Command

Cost increased from 2340 to 2400

Cooldown reduction increased from 10% to 20%

AP increased from 40 to 80

No longer grants HP/5 or Armor

Doran’s Blade

Cost reducedÂ from 475 to 440

Attack damage lowered from 10 to 8

Passive now grants 3 health per hit for ranged and 5 health per hit for melee from 5 health per hit for anyone.

Eleisa’s Miracle

No longer reduces the cooldowns of Summoner Spells

Enthropy

Cost decreased to 3475 from 3500

Locket of the Iron Solari

Cost increased to 2550 from 2500

Long Sword

Cost decreased to 360 from 400

Madred’s Razors

Armor reduced from 25 to 20

Mikael’s Crucible

Cost lowered from 2500 to 1600

No longer grants HP/5

MP/5 reduced from 18 to 12

Â Â Â Ohmwrecker

Cost decreased from 2835 to 2000

No longer grants 15 HP/5 and 15 MP/5

Phage

Cost decreased from 1350 to 1325

Â Â The Black Cleaver

Cost decreased from 3000 to 2920

The Bloodthrister

Cost decreased from 3200 to 3000

Trinity Force

Cost decreased from 3728 to 3703

Twin Shadows

Price increased from 1900 to 2000

AP increased from 40 to 50

Will of the Ancients

Cost reduced from 2550 to 2000

Now grants 10% CD

Now grants 10 MP/5

Zeke’s Herald

Cost decreased from 2650 to 2450

Jungle Changes

The gold income for a primary jungler wasn’t scaling appropriately for dedicated jungle farmers. Similarly, the jungle difficulty was out of line with what we thought was appropriate. Now the jungle difficulty is shown by monster level and the difficulty/rewards are linked to the monster level.

Jungle monsters now have levels

Jungle monster level is based on the average level of the champions in the game when they spawn (equal to average of all champion levels, rounded up)

Jungle monster level determines their HP/Damage and XP/Gold value

Jungle monsters grant 50% bonus XP per level to lower-level champions, up to a cap

Added an extra camp (the Wight) near the Blue Golem and Wolves

Crest of the Ancient Golem (â€œBlue Buffâ€)Crest of the Ancient Golem is too powerful at the moment, especially with such a wealth of cooldown reduction options available.

Cooldown Reduction reduced to 10% from 20%

Jungle Monster StatisticsAll jungle monsters have been retuned to better fit the new items being introduced as well as the new flow of the gameAncient Golem

Health increased to 1500 from 1400

Gold reduced to 60 from 66

Elder Lizard

Health increased to 1500 from 1400

Gold reduced to 60 from 66

Lizard

Attack Damage reduced to 10 from 11

Experience reduced to 20 from 50

Gold increased to 7 from 5

Giant Wolf

Attack Damage increased to 40 from 35

Experience reduced to 110 from 170

Gold reduced to 40 from 55

Wolf

Attack Damage increased to 14 from 8

Experience increased to 25 from 10

Gold increased to 8 from 4

Golem

Attack Damage increased to 55 from 54

Experience reduced to 140 from 160

Small Golem

Health increased to 450 from 300

Attack Damage reduced to 25 from 30

Experience increased to 40 from 38

Wraith

Experience reduced to 90 from 103

Gold increased to 35 from 30

Lesser Wraith

Health increased to 250 from 150

Attack Damage increased to 12 from 10

Experience increased to 20 from 4

Gold increased to 4 from 3

Wight (New Camp)

1400 Health

75 Attack Damage

15 Armor

55 Gold

150 Experience

Summoner Spell Changes

Summary: We want to increase diversity with summoner spell choices in League of Legends. Additionally, weâ€™ve done our annual overhaul of masteries and you can check them out in-game.

Certain summoner spells have become firmly entrenched within the League of Legends metagame while others have stagnated. We are tweaking summoner spells to make picking non-standard summoner spells a reasonable choice.

Now a targeted spell, casting this on yourself will target you and the closest nearby ally

Cast Range increased to 900 from 600

Cooldown reduced to 180 seconds from 300 seconds

Grants 30% movespeed to both targets for 1 second

Teleport

Cooldown reduced to 180 seconds when targetting an allied building

Cooldown increased to 300 seconds when cancelled or interrupted

Cleanse

Successfully cleansing an effect that prevents you from moving creates a shockwave that knocks nearby enemy’s back slightly.

Smite

Cooldown lowered to 40 sec.

Damage reduced at early character levels, same damage at level 18.

Clarity

Now only available on Howling Abyss

Revive

Now only available on Dominion

MasteriesMasteries that amplified summoner spells have been removed, as they unfairly penalized players who adapted to the enemy strategy by selecting summoner spells outside their preferred tree.

Masteries have been updated.”

Game Flow Changes

Summary: Itâ€™ll be a little difficult to summarize our core game flow changes here, but weâ€™re basically looking to clarify the benefits of each individual objective throughout the game. Additionally we want to tackle snowballing with our changes to alleviate some snowballing cases in the early and late game.TurretsThe player experience for last hitting under turrets was inconsistent between high Attack Damage champions and supports/mages. We’ve adjusted base turret damage and damage against minions to make last hitting under turrets more consistent across all roles

Base damage adjusted to match minion health growth

Base damage against minions increased to make last-hitting under turrets consistent

Turrets gave equal amounts of global gold for each turret, despite outer turrets being a lane objective. While some of this is beneficial, we donâ€™t believe a lane should lose simply because some other lane lost a turret too early.

Outer turrets now grant 100 global gold per player and 150 gold split among the players who kill the turret

Inner turrets now grant 125 global gold per player and 100 gold split among the players who kill the turret

Inhibitor turrets now grant 175 global gold per player

Taking outer turrets should be a team objective, but global experience on the outer turrets have some weird edge cases in lane, such as levelling up other lanes accidentally. We’re shifting this global experience to a phase of the game in which it’ll be more appreciated and less likely to cause odd level ups and snowball advantages.

Defending against a split pusher is extremely taxing, but ultimately unrewarding. We’ve added very small amounts of HP regen to inhibitor turrets to make extended split push defense grant the defending team some breathing room.

Inhibitor Turrets gained 15 hp / 5 seconds

DragonTo reduce the early snowball effect of Dragon and to give it a ‘mid-game comeback’ value, it now gives global gold and local experience based on its level. Dragon also gives additional bonus experience for Champions who are far behind in level. The Dragon level updates constantly, unlike other jungle monsters.

Dragon level minimum 6, maximum 15

Dragon local experience: 150 to 510 based on Dragon’s level, divided between nearby allied Champions

Dragon global Gold: 125 to 260 based on Dragon’s level given to all allied Champions

If killing team is lower average level than their opponents, bonus experience is gained at +25% per average level difference

Bonus experience is sharply increased for the lowest level members of the team, +15% per number of levels behind Dragon squared (max total +200% extra)

Inhibitors

Inhibitor death timers reduced to 4 minutes from 5 minutes

Inhibitors no longer grant a global buff to all minions when destroyed

Inhibitors now grant a stronger damage and durability buff to minions in their specific lane

Minion ExperienceThe fact that minions become worth more experience over time creates a severe discrepancy between champions who can farm or split push late game versus champions who are forced to siege or participate in objective control. We’re removing this as this causes champion levels to spike unnecessarily. While this has the potential to create some snowballing consequences, we’ll address that with future tuning over other systems

Lane Minions now have a level, which is equal to the average level of champions in the game.

Currently this has no effect on the game but will be expanded upon in the future.

Lane Minions are no longer worth more experience based on game time.

Minions will still become worth more gold and gain more statistics over time.

Bounty ChangesAlong with our game flow adjustments, weâ€™ve also adjusted gold income across the game to better fit what income patterns make sense in that phase.Level 1 team fights could swing the game too much, essentially ending a game before it began. Now the kill reward for very early game deaths is reduced.

Kills are worth 60% of the base reward at 2 mins, scaling to 100% at 4 mins

Players who are present for a large number of assists aren’t rewarded appropriately for their contribution to team fights

Assists are worth 50% of the kill value at 20 mins, increasing to 80% at 35 mins

Assist Bonuses

If players have 2 more assists than kills they get 30g additional gold per assist

Additional assists increase this bonus by 15 gold, capping at 60 gold

Creep Score Reducing Death SpreesProxy Farming is a fairly destructive method of playing the game, mostly due to the fact that your value as a champion isn’t being accurately updated to account for your actual value (due to farming minions).

Now every 1000 gold earned from minions/monsters reduces your Death Spree by 1

Death TimersEarly death timers were a little too punishing, given the importance of the early game. We’ve shaved a few seconds from this to help reduce early lane snowballing.

Early Game death timers have been reduced

Timers now start at 7.5 seconds instead of 12 and scale to the same values over the course of the game”

Runes and Masteries in Season 4

Â Â ricklessabandon: Hey all,

As each season comes to an end, we like to look through our out-of-game strategy systems – runes and masteries – to prepare for the new season. While we’re making some updates to masteries, we’re taking an especially thorough pass at runes as we feel they need more polish to better reflect their intended use. We’ll start with ricklessabandon and runes:

Runes

What are you actually doing for the preseason?

For now, we’re not actually going to be rolling out rune changes with the first preseason patch. Our current plan is to leave rune changes on PBE for an extended stay while we do additional focus testing.

That said, we did want to set certain expectations when it comes to our overarching philosophies and where runes will be in the new season.

What is the goal for runes?

The primary goal for runes is to tie marks, seals and glyphs to the specific wants and needs of various champion roles in League – similar to how masteries are used. Going forward, this creates a stronger association between marks and offense, seals and defense, and glyphs and utility. Fully supporting these divisions allows for stronger individual identities among different rune types – with more utility-focused glyphs (like movement speed or gold generation) or more defensively focused seals like hybrid mitigation (armor and magic resistance). This makes it easier to both balance current runes and create new runes in their specific roles.

How are runes today?

The first thing that stands out with live rune balance is that runes with the clearest power also happen to be among the strongest (flat AD, flat MR, flat armor, etc). Because of how infrequently runes are tuned, players tend to accept that certain runes provide a core set of base stats that are ‘best in slot’ and shy away from customization.

WhatÂ shouldÂ runes be like?

Ideally, runes should be used as tools to supplementÂ yourÂ play style for a given champion. Whether it’s boosting your dueling power in the laning phase or setting up for an epic late-game build, runes shouldÂ help define the framework of your unique play style. We’re giving runes clear strategic value and purpose in the new season to reinforce this point while making it easier for you to understand what to expect from your rune selection.

So the first thing we want to do is tone down the oppressively strong runes. There are currently a small handful of runes that provide more than their fair share of base stats while crowding out most other options. We might snipe off a few of the larger suspects before more comprehensive changes go out, but we’re definitely keeping an eye on the strongest outliers.

Another item on our to-do list for the new season is to establish a more consistent point where flat runes get beaten by runes that scale per level. Some of the existing crossover points don’t make sense in the framework of a typical game, so we want to clean these numbers up to clarify their strengths and weaknesses. Currently we’re looking at something like level 6 as the sweet spot where flat runes and scaling per level runes meet up. Up to level 6, flat runes will be better, while at level 6 and beyond, scaling runes become more and more powerful.

Ultimately, there are a lot of changes we’ve got planned for runes in the new season, but we’ll be taking a little more time to test them on the PBE (and to see how they fit into the regular flow of a game) before getting them out. Properly dividing runes into their three major categories (offense, defense, and utility) is something we have as a long-term vision for this new season, so keep that in mind as more changes come down the line. We’ll keep you updated as we go!

Now on to masteries with FeralPony:

Masteries

As for masteries, we aren’t making too many significant changes this season. Instead we’re targeting smaller goals and focusing on a few core philosophies with our annual mastery overhaul.

No more improved summoner spells

While specialized summoner spell masteries offer an impactful single-point option to enhance and improve playstyles, we think you’ll have even more mastery freedom if we remove these options entirely. This way, you aren’t obliged to invest mastery points specific to the summoner spells you take, summoner spells are the same regardless of your spec and you’ll have more opportunities to refine your masteries to match your playstyle.

9 mastery points define your early game. 21 points define your role.

We’re changing the function of the mastery trees in the preseason so that players who invest in the lower ranks of a tree gain specific early-game advantages, while those who commit to the more advanced masteries devote themselves to that role for the entire game. We really want you to feel like you’re committing to a playstyle when you invest heavily in a specific tree, so we’re adding advanced masteries that scale as the game goes on.

New shiny masteries

A few existing masteries have been reworked or replaced. For example, instead of granting one large attack speed boost after landing a critical strike, Frenzy now grants a slightly smaller but stackable attack speed buff. We’re also changing the Biscuiteer mastery so instead of granting a single-use biscuit, it now upgrades health potions into Rejuvenation Biscuits that also grant a little mana regen. I won’t dwell too much on the revamped masteries we have planned, as this is something you’ll discover when we roll them out (you’ve already heard of some of the support masteries!), but I just wanted to give you a sneak peek at what’s coming.

We’ll also be posting this onÂ redditÂ where we may pass through to clarify some questions. At the start of next week we’ll be doing a global recap to follow up with the most up-to-date information from questions around the world!